‘I love you more than anyone in the world. Never, ever would I hurt you,’ he repeated, as she finished tracing his jaw with her fingertips.
Turning her face to the fading sun, she sighed, ever so slightly— or held her breath, it’s unclear which. ‘Well, you’re the only one who could. Not Bill. Not the Others…’ (By the Others we aren’t sure if she meant Bill’s women or us.) ‘Only you.’
Truman replied with what he continues to incant in sloppy confessionals over six-hour luncheons, holding his rare companion captive, bearing reluctant witness to his catechisms on the subject of his passion for Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley. He states his most devout of intentions, which he hopes, in his heart of hearts, might still one day absolve him:
‘It would kill me to hurt you. I swear I never will.’
She smiled at him, sinking deeper into his arms.
‘I know, my darling. But you could.’
They swayed a half-hour longer, until they were enveloped in darkness.
Across the courtyard, lanterns were being lit, one by one, their stained glass flickering like varicolored fireflies. It was Babe who broke the silence, breathing in the fragrant night air, a sweetness lingering on the breeze.
‘Heliotrope,’ she exhaled, in that moment of contentment. ‘You know it’s my favorite?’ Then, upon reflection—‘Does heliotrope grow in Morocco?’
‘Not a clue, Babyling. Not a clue.’
‘Heliotrope…’ she repeated with a kind of wistfulness, picturing—we feel certain—her garden back home at Kiluna. ‘I suppose I must have imagined it.’
Far away, he hears his own voice, though his lips in the hammock have ceased to move.
‘STOP it…’
He envisions Maggie, in the desert at Thirst’s End, raising her head at the sound of a phrase she recognizes. He knows this can’t be real because Maggie had been put to sleep late last year. Her hind legs were paralyzed, just like his had been before the chicken blood. He had Jack drive her to the vet; he just couldn’t bear to do it himself. How he had wailed when she’d gone. He threw himself on the floor, pounded his fists, and sobbed until he just couldn’t sob any longer. He still begins to weep when he passes another dog on the beach, walking with its master. He’s had bulldogs all his grown-up life, but now he cannot think of getting a new one. He cannot bear to lose another living thing he loves.
‘I swear I’ll never hurt you…’
But you did, Truman… didn’t you?
He sometimes thinks he hears Maggie barking in the dunes outside the house in Sagaponack, hears her howling at the moon, on the ridge where he scattered her ashes.
I swear I’ll never hurt you. I swear I’ll never— —
‘JUST FUCKING STOP!!’ He bolts upright to find himself shouting.
Not to Babe, who, no longer speaking to him, has been in recent years reduced to a beautiful memory. Not to us—for while he can hear us, he cannot see or place us.
He starts to say more, but laughs at his foolishness. What would be the point? Memories cannot respond. Nor can invisible voices, should they choose not to cooperate.
He feels a surge of life shoot back into his limbs, healed by reluctant defiance. Lazy as he is, he’ll run a goddamn marathon if it saves him from living in memory.
He leaps from the bed with renewed, if manic, energy. A last desperate attempt to rescue himself from the wreckage of his thoughts, from the debris of his homemade bombs.
He slides his feet into a pair of moccasins and descends the steel spiral staircase into an open-plan living room. The stairs are freestanding—and painted cobalt blue, along with the floor, which lends the pleasant illusion of walking on water when he’s had a few too many.
He’s knocked out the upper walls himself, creating a world of height and light. Bookshelves flank a white bricked fireplace, rising two stories high. An equally tall picture window dominates one wall, yielding a panorama of sand dunes beyond. We’ve noticed on the shelves—among his prized paperweights and picture frames filled with mementos of former allies—more copies of his own books than those of other authors. Upon further examination it becomes clear they’re translations of his works into various languages, making his output appear more prolific than it’s been. We haven’t had much time to notice, it must be said, Truman having kept Sagaponack to himself, preferring to entertain at his U.N. Plaza digs—his salon in the sky. His Hamptons hideaway is preserved as his separate world, one he shares with Jack, for whom he bought the cottage next door, covered in roses and grapevines. He had presented Jack with the deeds to both houses, slipped into the wafer slits of a butterfly-box. Jack once told Babe it was the most generous act he’d ever known—Truman’s gift of security.
Their secluded compound is meant to be a temple to their art, though Jack’s steady, noble output exists in the shadow of Truman’s brilliance, his own small books hardly ever noticed.
Yet from what their neighbors report, Truman spends the bulk of his time of late making trips to the local liquor store. Or sitting for hours at Bobby Van’s restaurant in the one-street Bridgehampton hamlet. The waitresses know to bring him BLTs or grilled cheese sandwiches—clam chowders on Thursdays, when it’s soup of the day—and to keep refilling his OJ-and-ice, pretending not to notice when he adds his own hooch from a bottle poorly concealed in a brown paper sack. He’s never without his black doctor’s bag, from whose recesses he draws a series of pills, which he lines in a row on the Formica table. His ‘vitamins,’ he tells them, mistaken in his assumption that the waitstaff have never seen a Quaalude.
They look the other way, for, like us, they’ve fallen for Truman’s charms. Just as he’s done with each of us in turn, he flatters their hungry vanity. ‘Gladys, those gold hoops are simply marvelous! Wherever did you find them?’ or ‘Have you ever thought of getting a perm, Madge? A Botticelli halo around your gorgeous face…’ or ‘Goodness, Ruthie, but you have such regal bones! My clooooose friend Mrs. Vreeland ought to put you in her magazine!’ (Of course Diana had been sacked from Vogue nearly a decade before, but Tru’s Long Island Galateas neither know nor care. They’re simply happy to be made to feel attractive in their illfitting uniforms, after an eight-hour shift.)
In the house in the dunes, he wades through the blue planks into the kitchen—where a window above the sink reveals the surf, mere paces beyond. He opens the refrigerator, studying its contents, torn between options. There’s a leftover baked potato filled with caviar that he made and found he had no appetite for, several days before. There’s an egg that he could scramble, but thinks better of such effort. He spots a jar of horseradish—a flash of inspiration. Since there’s no one to consult, Jack being in Verbier and Mags in canine heaven, he imagines approval of a fortifying liquid brunch.
‘That’s what I thought,’ he says. ‘A Bloody-Blood it is.’ (Lest anyone judge, it could be worse… On particularly low days he turns to his Power Shake—a banana, splash of milk, and half-bottle of bourbon, swirled in a blender and sipped from a straw.) He removes a pitcher from the cabinet, filling it with a generous helping of Stoli, ready on the counter. He adds horseradish, Worcestershire and the dregs of a carton of V8. Finally he dumps in cubes from an ice tray, stirring the mix with a jiggle.
He opens his special cabinet, where he keeps his hidden treasures, acquired over time. A pair of Hermès ashtrays, an estate-sale score he’d bargained for, long before he had a pot to piss in. A Dodie Thayer soup tureen, shaped like a head of lettuce. A set of Baccarat goblets—his favorites, which he only brings out for special occasions. He holds one to the light, admiring its aesthetic perfection. Then, with a sense of purpose, he pours a Bloody from his pitcher into the glass, having decided today is one such ‘Occasion.’
He has a plan he means to execute, and that alone is cause for celebration.
‘Na zdorovye,’ he quips, toasting the ghosts in the ether.
He returns to the living room clutching his glass, collecting a white princess phone from its perch on
the stairs. He drags its exceptionally long wire across the space to the armchair by the fire—a Salvation Army rescue which Babe had helped him reupholster in a rich marigold velvet. It’s looking worse for wear, but it reminds him of her, so he wouldn’t dare alter it.
He gingerly sets his drink on the hearth, reaching for a wooden keepsake box, from which he draws his battered black book. Inside, in his spider-like scrawl, he’s written hundreds of names and addresses—his constellation of contacts, gathered over decades by the most diligent of star-catchers. Locations spanning the circumference of the globe, from Kansas to California to the breadth of the Continent. Manhattan to Majorca to Monroeville and back again. He flips lovingly through the pages, running his fingers over the fading ink, pausing at several names of folks he particularly misses.
After our jilting, he’d made a special trip to Tiffany’s and bought himself a brand-new address book—fine alligator leather, clean pages full of promise. He enjoyed himself thinking of the names that he would add—the new friends he was sure he’d acquire, to make up for the loss of old ones. He even had the shop girl wrap it specially, in robin’s-egg paper, tied with a white satin bow. He thought it would cheer him to open a present, pretending someone else had thought to give it to him. When he unwrapped it that night, sitting cross-legged on the floor in his U.N. Plaza study, he found, strangely, that it brought him little joy. The alligator leather failed to enchant as it had in its former milieu. No longer did its masculine scent titillate with newness. Nor did its blank pages seem a new beginning, as they had in the sanctum of Tiffany’s. Instead, they just felt empty. He placed the book back in its box and returned it the very next morning, unused.
Outdated or not, his old book gives him comfort. No matter that many of its luminaries are fading or have flickered out altogether. No matter that most of those still burning bright wouldn’t deign to return his calls, or answer his cards or letters…
How many of us still think of you? How many names in that book still care?
‘You know,’ he says aloud, to no one in particular, ‘the Chinese word for star is xīng. They have their own separate universe, divided into mansions.’
A third… ? A fifth? Or even less than that… ?
Placing his hands over his ears, he continues to orate. ‘They’re grouped into Four Symbols, all mythic creatures. The Azure Dragon of the East, White Tiger of the West—’
How many of those names give a flying fuck what happens to you now?
‘The Black Turtle of the North and Vermilion Bird of the South—’
At least before, you inspired our fear. Now you just have our indifference.
‘That Vermilion Bird, the Southern one, is stronger than you think. A fierce red phoenix with five-toned plumage, eternally covered in flames, rising from the—’
Don’t flatter yourself, T. You’re not a phoenix or a two-headed serpent. You’re at best a little ole common gutter snake. Just a pissant rug rat from Monroeville, shit-scared as ever.
‘Oh chickadees, you have no idea what more I have in store for you! Not the first clue what I have left in me…’ In defiance, he flips through his addresses. ‘Trust me—I’m just getting started!’ He finds the desired number. Dials. And in that reptilian hiss we’ve all come to loathe over time, he braves the receiver.
‘Misssster Clay Felker, s’il vous plaît.’ Then, delighted at the receptionist’s apparent recognition, ‘Why yeeeeesssssss, this is Mr. Truman Capote calling… How are you, sugar?’ (A career girl, we suspect—fresh out of Vassar? Eager to flatter her way out of the secretarial pool. Doubtful she’s actually read what you’ve done…)
He presses on. ‘Well, that’s just marvelous. Will you see if Mr. Felker might have a sec to spare… ?Yes, of course I’ll hold.’ He rises, crossing the room, an energized prowl between seating options—precisely what the mile-long cord had been rigged to facilitate. He tries a wicker side chair, then, thinking better, settles into the supple leather Chesterfield facing the window. He watches a gull glide past as a voice comes on the line.
‘Truman! This is a surprise.’ Like a warm rumble of thunder, that resonant bass, heralding the storm.
‘Hiya, Clay.’
‘How’re things?’
‘Oh fine, fine. How’s life treating you, back at chez Esquire?’
‘Can’t complain. How’s the masterpiece?’ Then, with a laugh as robust as the rest of him, ‘You done yet?’
‘Weeee-ulll, I wouldn’t say I’m done. It’s an endeavor of epic proportions, after all. But what I do have,’ he pauses both for impact, and for a sip from his Bloody, ‘is the final chapter.’
‘Oh?’ Tempered intrigue from a seasoned pro.
‘Yup—I’m working backward now. Last chapter to first. And boy, is it a gasper.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Clay baby, I’m calling with a little business proposition.’
‘What’ve you got for me?’
‘I’ve decided it’s time for another sneak peek—a fresh round of ammunition, just to keep’ em running.’
Silence from Clay, playing it cucumber-cool.
Truman continues, rising from the sofa, on the prowl once more, beginning to enjoy himself. ‘Seeing as how my last Esquire outing had such an explosive impact, I just couldn’t bear to offer this new bit to anybody else. That’s why I’m calling you personally.’ (Silence still.) ‘Hello… ? Clay… ? Cat got your tongue?’
The pause, one assumes, is strategic. As we say, even the great Clay Felker—patron saint of New Journalism—must have his interest piqued.
If gossip was art to Truman, it was copy to Clay—the stuff of the Big Story, the one that made his readers squirm with the discomfort of its gaze, yet compelled one to read on nonetheless. If anyone could see the art in Truman’s madness when it came to Answered Prayers, Clay would be the man. While outwardly opposites in every regard—one looking up at the world at barely five foot three, the other towering over it, well over six feet tall—they were both part of the same special breed. Outsiders both, Gatsbyesque idealists.
Oh yes. Truman has an instinct—even as others are failing him—that the bold and mighty Felker might be his last great hope.
‘So… ? What do you think of my offer?’ Truman returns to the sofa now, unused to the pause in proceedings. ‘Need I remind you how looooong the public has been waiting for this chapter—the last chapter of my magnum opus, twenty years in the making…?’
From the other end of the line, an intake of breath, then—‘Well, of course, Truman, we’d be very excited at the prospect of running the chapter. Very excited indeed.’
‘Goody. I just knew that you would be. I’m delighted, Clay. Simply over the— —’
‘But you know we’ll have certain conditions…’
That’s straightened his spine. The Great Author bristles at the unfamiliar sting of conditions. ‘Such as… ?’
‘I want to read the story first.’
‘And… ?’
‘That’s it. I just want to read it.’
It’s Truman’s turn to fall silent.
Clay continues, ‘It’s not that I don’t think that it will be great. You always deliver, when you deliver. There’s just been a lot of buzz. Alotta talk. About delivery dates you haven’t met. Advances already spent… Hell, Random House is already out seven hundred grand in blue-chip stocks alone. Fox three-fifty for the film rights, before they recouped their down payment.’
‘And—?’
‘Look, Truman. You know as well as I do how big this thing will be… But if we’re going to throw our hats into the ring, I wanna make sure we’ll still have our heads when it’s over.’
‘All right…’
‘I’ll be in the Hamptons over the weekend. Gail and I have a house about two miles from yours—in Wainscott. I’ll ride my bike over on Saturday.’
‘First things first. How much are you boys at Esquire willing to pony up… ?’
‘How much you asking
?’
‘Forty-five grand.’
‘How many words?’
‘Who’s counting?’
‘Ballpark.’
‘Thirty thousand, give or take.’
‘Give or take?’
‘Dollar fifty a word—’
‘A dollar.’
‘Thirty-five thousand. Total.’ Truman stands firm.
‘Done,’ Clay accepts.
Truman slides the rest of the Bloody down his gullet, crunching the last sliver of ice between his teeth. ‘Maaaarvelous. I’m dancing a jig as we speak.’ (In reality he’s lying flat like a slug on the Chesterfield.)
‘Saturday then. Ten a.m.’
‘Breakfast with Esquire it is.’ He sets the phone back in its cradle, heading for the kitchen for a refill from his celebratory pitcher.
AT THE WEEKEND, clay pedals the two miles west to Sagaponack. Traveling along this stretch of the South Fork, he can’t help but note how much its remote fields and overgrown reeds evoke the starkness of Truman’s Kansas prose and wonders if that’s why the author feels at home here.
Arriving at his destination, Clay walks his bicycle up the winding drive to a weathered-plank beach house. He leans the bike against a gate and approaches the back door, as instructed.
He’ll later admit to confidants that his heart was racing as he approached, breathless with the anticipation of seeing a scrap of the fabled Answered Prayers. Of course he wanted the goddamn chapter. He’d been dancing around this debacle for years. The three extracts under previous editors were the biggest thing to hit Esquire in eons—practically since its inception. He could hardly have imagined a better way to kick off his tenure as editor-in-chief.
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